Upper arm tattoo of the words The Joke's On You in black lettering, with black Joker-style eyes and a red smile in a watercolour splatter style.

The Joke's On You lettering with Joker eyes on upper arm

Lettering · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows the words THE JOKE'S ON YOU in bold black lettering, stacked over a pair of heavy black eyes and a red smile that fades into the skin. Soft green and red splatter effects surround the design, giving a loose, painted look. The tattoo covers the upper arm and fills most of the frame, with a red t-shirt sleeve at the left edge.

Lettering Upper arm Lettering Joker Eye Smile Splatter Watercolour

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The paint was still tacky on the bandstand when Ivo Crane came back from the gents, wiping his fingers on a silk handkerchief and grinning like a man who had just sold the pier. He had taken the Palais for a fortnight under a name that wasn't his, and every poster along the front read THE JOKE'S ON YOU in letters so black they seemed to drip. Nobody asked what the joke was. People in those days paid a shilling to find out.

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I played piano for the Saturday dances and kept my mouth shut, which was the only trade I had left after the war. Crane had painted the eyes himself on the back wall, heavy and sooty, with a red smile running down the plaster as if something had bled through. Girls waltzed under it and laughed, and laughing was good for business.

On the last night the hall filled with people who had paid to be let in. Crane stood beneath his painted face in a red waistcoat and bowed to Mr Pargeter, the owner, who had come to count the takings. Pargeter counted. Every envelope held blank paper, and the notes were already folded in Crane's breast pocket, still warm from the till.

By midnight the floor was empty and Pargeter sat on the stage steps, reading the small print at the bottom of a poster that had been there all along. I kept playing. It seemed a shame to stop with the back wall still grinning at us, green paint spattered across the boards where someone had tried to scrub the joke off and given up.